The filthy rich have their grubby hands firmly in control of our government What can we do to stop them?
For me, the very concept of one person being a billionaire is obscene.
While I support the idea of someone becoming filthy rich on account of their own ideas and acumen, I shudder at the concept of one person holding over a thousand million dollars all to themselves. John D. Rockefeller was the first because of Standard Oil. Today, Forbes says there are 2,781 billionaires on the planet (801 of those in the USA). And they keep getting richer. And over one dozen of them have surpassed $100 billion in personal wealth.
I repeat. This is obscene.
While regular parents cannot afford child care and bridges cannot find the funding to be rebuilt and no one can figure out what to do with the legions of homeless now crowding our towns and cities, the holdings of just one of these billionaires could solve much of that. Instead, they just add to their own wealth.
And now the American president-elect has named over one dozen billionaires to his cabinet and other positions inside this now so-called democracy. With every billionaire appointee comes a minefield of conflicts of interest and ethical concerns — exactly the kind of swampy conditions that Trump has vowed to drain.
It is hard to see how a cabinet made up largely of the very, very wealthiest of Americans is going to have an understanding of what the needs of regular Americans are. “People who spend their entire lives getting rich do not automatically forget their economic stakes when they enter government,” said Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project.
A great many of those named to top jobs gave millions to Trump.
So, besides abolishing billionaires, what can we do?
How about that old chestnut of publicly funded elections? This would have precluded “jumping” Elon Musk from spending a quarter-billion dollars for Trump and buying himself a place in our government, a place where supposedly he, and only he, determines which are “fake jobs.” And it would have precluded many of those recently elected from buying the seats they won.
Eliminating professional lobbyists would clean up our politics and enable democracy as well. And what about eliminating the Social Security tax cap? Those who can pay more should pay more.
Americans rejected royalty as part of our beginnings. But we have replaced that with fealty to the rich. Almost none of these billionaires named by Trump have the slightest experience, knowledge or qualifications for the jobs. But they’re filthy rich.
Is that our new standard for excellence?
Van Carter of Sioux Falls is a retired broadcast journalist and environmentalist who published a green website for 15 years. This essay originally appeared on the Change Agents of South Dakota website.
Photo: public domain, wikimedia commons
